Not to be confused with science.
{ I did my own peer review of this article and give it 10/10. ~drummyfish }
Soyence (also soyience) is business, propaganda and politics trying to pass as science, nowadays promoted typically by pseudoleftists, pseudoskeptics, capitalists and corporations. It is what in the 21st century has taken on the role that's historically been played by the church: that of establishing and maintaining orthodoxy for the control of mass population -- this time it is so called "science" or "rationality" that's used as the tool instead of God and religion, however the results are the same. Soyence is not about listening to what science says, it is about listetning to what "reputable scientists" say, and of course not questioning them; soyence is what the typical reddit atheist or tiktok feminist believes science is or what Neil De Grass Tyson tells you science is. While science is about collecting facts and drawing conclusions, soyence is about setting conclusions and finding or fabricating facts that support them. One red flag to watch out in relation to soyence is a great weight put on reputation -- in true science reputation plays no role, only results do; reputation and its great value for one's acceptance is rather part of politics (and maybe show business). Notice for example how in the past it was more common to hear "science has found X" (as in "logic itself shows this fact") rather than "scientists have found X", which is more common nowadays -- mentally we have shifted to separate people to "scientists", those who "know" and dictate what's true, and non-scientists, those who don't know and must just listen. Soyence calls itself the one and only science^TM and gatekeeps the term by calling unpopular science (such as that regarding human race, questioning official versions of historical events or safety of big pharma vaccines) "pseudoscience" and "conspiracy theories". Soyence itself is pseudoscience but it has an official status, approval of state, strong connection to politics, it is mainstream, popular, controlled by those in power, censored ("moderated") and intentionally misleading. Soyence can be encountered in much of academia, on Wikipedia and in other popular/mainstream media such as TV "documentaries" and YouTube. A soyence supporter wrongfully believes that reason wouldn't allow such a large scale mass population manipulation (despite this happening over and over throughout history) -- people at large aren't reasonable and reason cannot beat propaganda; only the highest naivety could make you believe that politics will follow science -- it's the other way around, and always has been.
Compared to good old fun pseudosciences such as astrology and flat Earth, soyence is extra sneaky by purposefully trying to blend in with real science, i.e. within a certain truly scientific field, such as biology, there is a soyentific cancer mixed in by activists, corporations and state, that may be hard to separate for common folk and many times even for pros. This is extremely harmful as in the eyes of retarded people (basically everyone) the neighboring legit science gives credibility to propaganda bullshit. There is a tendency to think we somehow magically live in a time that's fundamentally different from other times in history in which it is now a pretty clear and uncontroversial fact that the name of science was abused hard by propaganda, almost everyone easily accepts that historically politically constructed lies were presented as confirmed by science, but somehow people refuse to believe it could be the case nowadays. In times of Nazism there was no doubt about race being a completely scientific term and that Jews were scientifically confirmed to be the inferior race -- nowadays in times when anti Nazis have won and politics is based on denying existence of race somehow scientists start to magically find evidence that no such thing as race has ever existed -- how convenient! And just in case you wanted to check if it's actually true, you'll be labeled a racist and you won't find job ever again.
Soyence uses all the cheap tricks of politics (also not dissimilar to those of greenwashing, openwashing etc.) to win stupid people, it builds on the cult of bullying religion and creating a war mentality, overuse of twisted "rationality" (pseudoskepticism), creating science bloat and bullshit "scientific" fields to obscure lies, punishment of the correct use of rationality, building cults of personality ("science educators", the gatekeepers of "science") and appealing to egoism and naivity of wannabe smartasses while at the same time not even holding up to principles of science such as genuine objectivity. A soyence kid will for example keep preaching about how everything should be proven by reproducible experiments while at the same time accepting de facto irreproducible results, e.g. those obtained with billion dollar worth research performed at CERN which can NOT be reproduced anywhere else than at CERN with thousands of top scientist putting in years of work. Such results are not reproducible in practice, they are accepted on the basis of pure faith in those presenting it, just as religious people accept the words of preachers. The kid will argue that in theory someone else can build another CERN and reproduce the results, but that won't happen in practice, it's just a purely theoretical unrealistic scenario so his version of what "science" is is really based on reproducibility that only works in a dreamed up world, this kind of reproducibility doesn't at all fulfill its original purpose of allowing others to check, confirm or refute the results of experiments. This starts to play a bigger role when for example vaccines start to get promoted by the government as "proven safe by science" (read "claimed safe by a corporation who makes money off of people being sick"), the soyence kid will gladly accept the vaccine and fight for their acceptance just thanks to this label, not based on any truly scientific facts but out of pure faith in self proclaimed science authorities -- here the soyentist is relying purely on faith, a concept he would like to think he hates with his soul.
The "citation needed" craziness that indicates lack of any brain and pure reliance on the word of authority is seen e.g. on Wikipedia. Wikipedia doesn't accept original research, observation or EVEN LOGIC ITSELF as a basis for presenting something -- everything, even trivial claims have to have a "citation" from a source WITH mainstream political views (unpopular and controversial sources are banned); Wikipedia is therefore one big propaganda ground for those with power over the mainstream media.
Soyence relies on low IQ, shallow education and popular "science education" (e.g. neil de grass), while making its followers believe they are smart. It produces propaganda material such as "documentaries" with Morgan Freeman (i.e. people who are good at persuasion rather than being competent), series like The Big Bang Theory and YouTube videos with titles such as "Debunking Flat Earth with FACTS AND LOGIC", so there's a huge mass of NPCs thinking they are Einsteins who blindly support this cult. Soyence attacks science from within by attacking its core principles, i.e. it tries to ridicule and punish thinking outside the box and asking specific questions -- in this it is not dissimilar to a mass religion.
Examples of soyence:
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